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Playgrounds for adults: new trend helps couch potatoes get into the swing

GreenGym Outdoor Fitness Park

Photograph by: Handout
, GreenGym Outdoor Fitness Park

For anyone who's stared longingly at a swing-set or quietly cursed the height restriction at McDonald's Playland, the International Council on Active Aging brings a ball-pit full of good news.

At the organization’s latest annual conference, “older-adult playgrounds” were endorsed as a way of getting baby boomers and seniors to embrace healthier, active lifestyles. Like an Amber Alert for your inner child, the idea is to help grown-ups recover their sense of play and trick them into exercising at the same time.

Best of all, there’s no need to worry about whether someone’s peed in the sandbox. (Presumably, anyway.)

“I think this concept will become vital,” says Colin Milner, the Vancouver-based CEO of the Active Aging council. “It’s about giving yourself permission to have fun instead of thinking of it as rigorous exercise.”

Across all demographics, research shows that play positively affects mood, boosts the immune system and improves health and well-being. And though its value has been eclipsed in recent decades by workhorse culture, Milner believes play is ripe for rediscovery -- not least since Canada has a critical need to ensure the health of its rapidly greying citizens.

A 2010 report on Canada’s aging population, for instance, finds fully 15 per cent of those 65 to 79 have at least four chronic diseases, many of which can be prevented, delayed or relieved by physical activity (think diabetes and hypertension).

Milner cites Chile and China as successful test cases for older-adult playgrounds, which have become as much a part of preventive health-care in those regions as doctor’s visits and vitamins. What they look like, however, varies widely.

“An older-adult playground is any type of structured area that enables you to really release your inhibitions and enjoy yourself -- whether it’s on a jungle gym or an elliptical,” says Milner. “It’s never too late to play. And once you start playing, you really don’t want to stop.”

In North America, the concept has closer parentage to a traditional gym than Chuck E. Cheese, with most parks featuring brightly coloured outdoor versions of fitness equipment: rowers, air-walkers and other machines that leverage body resistance. But one of the Canadian manufacturers says people respond to the environment as if it were a playground.

“Some people are intimidated by (a traditional gym); it’s almost like going to the dentist. This is more like play with fitness benefits as opposed to actually going exercising,” says Guy Chaham, whose Halifax-based company GreenGym Outdoor Fitness Equipment has outfitted around 275 parks across the country.

“You can tell someone to play soccer, advertise soccer on TV, place soccer ads on the radio. But if you put the ball between their legs, they’re probably going to play. This is based on that concept: if you put fitness equipment where people are, they’re going to use it.”

Geoffrey Godbey, past president of the Academy of Leisure Sciences, is pleased with the trend’s momentum. But he suspects it would find a more enthusiastic audience if the focus was placed more emphatically on fun as opposed to on burning fat.

“Some of the estimates are that half of the people who join fitness clubs become inactive within six months. So if you simply move that model outside, the same thing might happen,” says Godbey, professor emeritus of recreation, park and tourism management at Penn State University. “I think there could be a little more imagination used.”

Even marketers are starting to tap adults’ sense of play deprivation. In 2010, McDonald’s built a three-story version of its popular Playland concept in Sydney, Australia, encouraging downtown workers to “forget about the deadlines, budgets and stresses of life and just revel in this incredible childhood arcadia.” Godbey is among those paying attention -- and he hopes the industry will follow suit.

“Playground equipment manufacturers still think primarily of children and early adolescents; they haven’t thought much about the fact adults like swings, too,” he says, adding that the potential return on investment in health-care savings could be significant in the long-term.

“You’ve got the walking benefit of getting there, you’ve got the on-site benefit, and you’ve got the hidden benefit that, for two hours, you’re not eating junk food and sucking on a Molson.”

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